This year, the Legislature showed what can happen when it works
together in a bipartisan manner to get results. The 2005
legislative session was a step in the right direction.

In 2006, I will continue focusing on what’s important to
our families - creating good-paying jobs, providing quality
education for our children, ensuring access to sound health care,
and reducing the tax burden to help families keep more of their
hard-earned money.

As always, I welcome your input. Please call my office at (607)
277-8030 or e-mail
liftonb@assembly.state.ny.us
with any questions or concerns. Together we can get results.

The Assembly adopted many rules changes this past legislative
session to make the People’s House more effective and
responsive to New Yorkers.

Beginning next year, there will be gavel-to-gavel television
coverage of the Assembly and Senate sessions. Similar to C-SPAN,
New Yorkers across the state will be able to get a better
understanding of state government.

Enacting historic reforms

The Assembly also passed meaningful reforms this year, several
of which became law:

Lobbying reform - making billions of dollars spent on government
contracts subject to more accountability and greater scrutiny (Ch.
1 of 2005)

Ethics reform - closing a loophole that allowed state employees
to escape ethics investigations by simply leaving their jobs (Ch.
165 of 2005)

Empire Zone reform - ensuring that the Empire Zone
program will better address the economically distressed
communities it was designed to help and allowing for the
creation of an Empire Zone in Tompkins County
(Ch. 63 of 2005)

An on-time budget that provides for working families

This year’s historic, on-time state budget:

Caps Medicaid costs, saving Cortland and Tompkins counties
$3.1 million in 2006 and $5.9 million in 2007 and reducing the tax
burden, without losing essential services that working families
depend on

Provides $5.1 million more than last year in state education aid
for schools in Tompkins and Cortland counties to give children a
quality education while keeping taxes in check

Allocates $2.9 million more statewide for school audits to better
ensure that schools spend taxpayer dollars wisely

Provides $67,837 for the Finger Lakes library system

Rejects the governor’s proposed 50 percent cut to the Tuition
Assistance Program, keeping college within reach for everyone

Restores community college aid to $115 per full-time equivalent
student, providing Tompkins Cortland Community College with $333,500
more each year

Fixing the state’s voting system

Assemblywoman Lifton is heavily involved in the implementation of
the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in New York. She helped pass
legislation to provide voters with an electoral system that
encourages voter participation and protects the integrity of
the democratic process (Chs. 23, 24, 160, 179, 180 & 181 of
2005).

Lifton was also appointed to the Citizens’ Election
Modernization Advisory Committee, a 12-member, bipartisan team
assembled to review and make recommendations on which voting
machines meet the requirements of HAVA and New York’s election
law. She is working to ensure that voters will cast their
ballots on machines that work reliably, accommodate people with
disabilities and count votes accurately.

The state received $190 million in federal aid earmarked for
new voting machines. Although the machines have to meet certain
state and federal standards, counties will have the final
decision about which ones to adopt. As a member of the advisory
committee, Assemblywoman Lifton is working to try to ensure
that counties have a real choice of voting machines and that
decisions won’t be dictated by private companies.